damn it!”
He turned back to the girl. She was scratching her cheek where the tiny dart had struck her, and already her eyes were going blank.
“Come along with me, Rita,” he ordered. Without bothering to see if she followed, he staggered back to the other hovercar.
Phil Birdman had managed to get through. Evidently, Baron Wyler had been stationed at a screen waiting for a report from his guards on the progress of the chase. His face was on the screen.
Ronny Bronston slumped into his seat, the drugged girl climbed in next to him, the slim figure warm but unnoticed against his side.
He said weakly, “We’ve got your niece, Uncle Max. She’s going with us into Phrygia.”
The Baron’s face was blazing with anger. “Have you supposed altruists of Section G stooped to abducting helpless women and using them as hostages to protect your miserable selves?”
“You have said it, friend,” Phil Birdman said flatly. He kicked the acceleration pedal with his foot, switched off the screen again to prevent the other from following their conversation.
Ronny Bronston had been hanging on to consciousness with considerable effort. Now he gave up.
XI
Ronny came to, weakly, in the hideaway the Indian operative had made in the suburban housing area of the Phrygian capital. Evidently, Phil had just given him a draught of something highly stimulating.
“How’d you ever make it?” Ronny murmured.
Phil grinned down at him. Bronston was stretched out on a couch. “Ugh. Redman have no trouble shaking pursuing palefaces in confusion of big city traffic.”
“Funnies, I get,” Ronny muttered. “Where’s the girl?”
“She’s with us. Our strongman isn’t as strong as he ought to be, if he’s thinking in terms of taking over whole empires of planets. He should have figured her expendable.”
Ronny said, before passing out again, “Get the Old Man.”
Phil Birdman went over to the desk and set up the Section G communicator. He said into it, “Irene Kasansky, soonest.”
Her tight face faded in, her expression worried. “Phil Birdman,” she said, “what’s going on?”
“Give me the Chief, Irene. Absolutely soonest.”
“He and Jakes are waiting for your report.”
Metaxa’s acid sour face faded in. “Birdman!” he growled. “What’s happened to Ronny Bronston?”
The Indian said, “I’ve got him here. He’s out.” He had an edge of bitterness in his voice now. “He took your orders literally, of course. The only way of getting that information was for him to go into pseudo-time.”
Ross Metaxa stared at him, unblinkingly. “How long was he under?”
“Evidently maximum. He probably set some sort of record.”
The Section G head allowed himself to close his eyes for the briefest of seconds. He took a deep breath and said, “Did he get the information from that funker?”
“I think so. He brought a star chart away with him.” Phil Birdman cleared his throat. “We also have a hostage. The Baron’s niece.”
Ross Metaxa assimilated that, not bothering to ask for details. He said, finally, “Have you any manner of getting out into space?”
Birdman hesitated. “UP has a small craft assigned to it. But if we utilize that, I have no doubt that the Baron will lower the boom on all UP personnel, the moment we’re gone. He’s got a reputation for ruthlessness, when he gets excited about something.”
Metaxa shook his head. “They’ll have to take their chances. You and Ronny and the girl get yourselves out. There’s a Space Forces cruiser heading at top speed for you. They’ll be there in five days, Earth time.”
“Then what do we do?” Birdman said, though he could see it coming. “Return Ronny to Earth for whatever treatment he can get?”
Ross Metaxa looked at him bleakly. “The Baron is going to head immediately for those Dawnworlds. You take off after him. In a week’s time, Bronston will have recovered.”
The Indian said flatly, “Ronny Bronston will never recover, as you well know, Commissioner. He’s lost at least twenty years in that jazzed up phoney-time he went into. Five years from now, he’ll look and be twenty-five years older than he is today.”
Metaxa said evenly, “He knew what he was doing, Birdman. He did what he had to do. He wouldn’t have been Ronald Bronston otherwise. He’ll recover within a week. As you know, the age doesn’t come immediately, but over a period of time. For awhile, it won’t effect him. When he has recovered, give him the story and make your way immediately after the Baron.”
The Indian operative scowled. “How do you know the Baron, personally, will go out to the Dawnworlds?”
“Because when men like Maximilian Wyler really get in the clutch there’s nobody they dare trust. He could never be certain that his closest right-hand man wouldn’t take over the reins, given some of those gismos the Dawnmen evidently have. No, you can be sure that the Baron will go himself.”
His face faded from the screen.
Birdman looked at the now opaque screen for a long moment. “So everybody’s expendable, including the complete UP staff on Phrygia. The party’s getting rough.”
Ross Metaxa had been right. By the time the four man Space Forces cruiser reached them, Ronny Bronston was in his old shape. Good food and rest had done it. He felt the same as ever. All except, deep within, he knew that he had thrown away at least twenty years, the good years, of life. A few Earth years from now and he would look and be as old as Metaxa himself. It wasn’t the happiest of prospects.
No effort whatsoever was being made to apprehend them. The Baron’s regard for his niece evidently precluded any attempt by the Phrygian spaceforces to find and destroy their craft.
It occured to Ronny Bronston that if the girl were as close as all that to the would-be dictator, perhaps she had information about the man that might be of use in later developments. As he rested in the small space vessel that they had taken over from UP, he tried to pump her, though with precious little luck.
To the extent she could, in the confined space allotted to her and the two Section G operatives, she tried to ignore them. From time to time, though, temper flared and she allowed herself to be drawn into argument.
The time, for instance, that she snapped out of a clear sky, “I don’t see why you don’t recognize that UP needs a leader such as Uncle Max.”
Ronny said mildly, “Perhaps it does.”
“Then why are you trying to hinder him? Why don’t you join him?” she demanded.
Ronny looked at her wryly, “He hasn’t proven to my satisfaction, as yet, that he’s the man he thinks he is. Perhaps history will prove otherwise. As you pointed out the other day, it is strewn with the wreckage of would-be strongmen, who didn’t make it.”
“My uncle will make it!” The girl’s natural attractiveness was accentuated in anger.
“Meanwhile”—Phil Birdman grinned at her—“there are a few of us who don’t think so.”
Ronny said, “Many aspire to supreme power, few are chosen. Take those examples you gave me the other day: Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler. They each supply a lesson.
“Alexander, for instance. He conquered the biggest empire known up to that time, but died at about my age from his inability to conquer himself. And when he died he left precious little. His immediate family, including his son, were killed off. That wonderful team of his fell apart, each trying to seize absolute power. Of them all, Ptolemy didn’t do so badly; he and his descendants got Egypt as their chunk of the pie. But the next fifty years and more was spent by the Macedonians trying to find another strongman, and failing”— Ronny twisted his mouth— “Their energies might have been put to better use.
“Or take your other example, Napoleon. He had his absolute power for while, but he was still in his forties
